Newly Minted Tradition

Sometimes, I feel a little silly saying I "invented" a new dish - I think they've all been tried before. However, when I stumble upon flavors that I, myself, have never tried or read about before, it feels like true innovation to me.

This dish was like that. I had just about a quarter of a small kabocha squash left from a previous meal and wanted to roast it tossed simply in olive oil, salt and pepper to accompany our Thanksgiving dinner. I made a fairly fine dice out of it, thinking it would cook quickly, and slid it after tossing into a 350 degree oven. I nearly burned it - you can see that a few of the smaller pieces did approach ignition - and when I tasted it, it was good in that hearty, sweetish, comforting way that kabocha squash always is but, admittedly, a little on the ho-hum side.

I had picked up at the supermarket the previous day a small package of glazed pecans - nothing but the nuts very lightly coated with canola oil and sugar and, I suspect, roasted briefly - and I had the idea of adding them to the squash dish while it was still hot. It was so good that it will be an honored guest at all subsequent Thanksgiving dinners at our house. Next time, I will make slightly larger cubes of squash but I'll be even more liberal with the toasty nuts. While it wasn't as sweet as pumpkin pie or that squash dish with melted marshmallows on top, it was a really nice accompaniment to our dinner and I'm already dreaming of serving it alongside a roasted pork chop. I got a little frisson of pleasure, too, at thinking I had invented a whole new dish.